I have a lot of respect for Anil, and I broadly agree with him about many issues related to AI consciousness and welfare. At the same time, I feel the need to push back against some of the substantive claims and divisive rhetoric in this post and the linked thread. - While the evidence for consciousness in current AI systems may be weak, the probability is already nonzero, plausibly non-negligible, and likely to increase over time, especially if and when AI systems acquire more biologically inspired architectures. - While over-attributing consciousness and welfare to AI carries serious risks, so does under-attributing them, and it can be reasonable to explore interventions that mitigate both risks at the same time, in proportion to the probability and severity of each. - Despite what David suggests in the linked thread, most people who support AI welfare work, including at Anthropic, are not certain that AI systems are or will be welfare subjects. They think this is a realistic possibility worthy of serious consideration. - Despite what Anil suggests here, this debate is not a matter of neuroscience and philosophy on one side and "the techno-chambers of the frontier firms" on the other. Serious scientists, philosophers, and AI developers are on both sides. - Corporate incentives also cut both ways. In some contexts, companies may have an incentive to play up AI consciousness in order to hype capabilities and encourage engagement with their models. In other contexts, they may have an incentive to play it down in order to avoid calls for oversight and regulation, especially as welfare protections become costlier. In any case, even if incentives pushed in one direction, that would not settle whether AI systems are, in fact, conscious and deserving of protection. - I disagree that openness to AI consciousness and welfare is "profoundly dehumanising." A major part of what makes humanity special is our capacity to care for others, and in a world that still contains factory farming, cultivating that capacity should be seen as profoundly humanizing, an expression of our better angels. Granted, we can take this impulse too far, which is why we need serious research and policy to strike a balance. Still, the aim should be extending care appropriately, not dismissing the project altogether. Again, I think Anil and I agree more than we disagree. But I also think that efforts to assess and address AI consciousness and welfare will be much more productive if they start from an acknowledgment of what makes it so important and so difficult. I discuss these issues in more detail elsewhere, including in an Aeon essay on why we should assess AI welfare probabilistically: aeon.co/essays/an-ant-is-dro… And in an AI Frontiers essay on how we can study AI welfare empirically, using behavioral, internal, and developmental markers: ai-frontiers.org/articles/a-…